Over the years, one of the most frequent complaints I hear from CIO/CTOs, COOs and CEOs is how the proliferation of proptech in the rental housing space often creates a rat’s nest of disparate tech solutions that rarely, if ever, integrate in a way that creates an easily manageable data ecosystem.

For many years, I truly empathized with this challenge as I felt their pain and wished that vendors would do a better job at making lives easier for these executives and their companies. In many ways, I still do—particularly with how many of the property management systems (PMSs) practically hold data hostage. In my opinion and in many other industries, data should flow like water, and those who create the data should own it.

However, in other ways, I am beginning to feel as though executives in this industry are getting exactly what they are asking for. “Wait,” you say, “what right-minded executive WANTS a rat’s nest of a tech stack?”

When asked that way, the answer is, of course, “no one.” However, when looked at from the perspective of what executives are incentivizing vendors in proptech to do, the answer is actually, “Everyone!”

How can this be so? If you’re an operator, an owner and/or an asset manager, think about the last few technology purchases you’ve made; if you’re a vendor reading this, think about the last few sales you’ve made.

How many times did the selection involve a deep review of where that technology was likely to be in 3-5 years? How often were questions asked about the nature of the solution? Is this truly a single point solution for which we need not think about the future of the tech stack? Or is it better thought of as one element of a broader platform—an important, but not the only, piece of an ecosystem of solutions we are trying to create?

The plain and simple truth is that most technologies in this industry are bought when companies decide to “scratch an itch.” The itch comes from some stimulus to act. Maybe the CEO or COO feels a particular pain; maybe someone lower in the organization brings an idea to a senior executive; maybe we see a competitor doing something and don’t want to be left behind, or maybe we just read an article in the trade press or sat in on a session at a conference and were motivated to look at a particular technology solution.

Whatever the case, the urge is then to search for the point solution that scratches that itch. Without thinking more broadly about the platform we want to create…about where this solution fits in our technology ecosystem, the natural and logical consequences of this approach are that we will end up with a rat’s nest of technology within the next few years. That may not be the explicit intent, but it is exactly the result that is enabled, even incented, by this approach.

In my world, there are multiple point solutions for business intelligence, for property budgeting and forecasting and for pricing and revenue management. Each have their own unique advantages and disadvantages. And it should not come as a surprise that they all don’t necessarily fit together well. Scratch the BI itch with one decision; then a year or two later, scratch the pricing itch with another decision and then finally scratch the budget software itch with yet a third and—(no) surprise! There’s the rat’s nest of tech.

Think instead about how today’s itch fits into a bigger pattern of the way you want to connect all of your analytics into a platform. Think instead about how such a “Connected Analytics Platform” connects not only different data solutions but also different departments and functions within your company, and you suddenly realize you’re looking for a different type of solution altogether. With multiple analytics point solutions integrated as part of a true platform, you can leverage the power of connected analytics. That’s why we’re on a mission to change how the industry uses data!

In the end, executives will get exactly what they focus on. Scratch your itches with point solutions, and you’ll get that metaphorical rat’s nest of a tech and data stack. Think more about platforms and ecosystems of solutions, and you’ll avoid many of those problems plaguing the industry today!